Page 49 of Written By a Woman

You could hear a pin drop in the silence the three of us sat in after I finally admitted it. I kept my face in my hands for a few extra moments, telling myself that I needed to put on my big girl socks and face my friends, so after a few more painfully quiet seconds, I lifted my gaze to meet theirs.

Their expressions were mostly confused.

“You…what?” Mary was the most confused.

“You wrote a book?” Jamie asked.

“So, here’s the thing,” I folded my fingers together under my chin, “I’m writing a romance novel and it’s a super big deal. I am in the middle of the first round of edits. I have a literary agent who is helping me with my end goal of signing a three-book deal with a publisher of my dreams, and I might be able to make writing my full-time job. The problem, however, is that when I first started writing this book, I used Zaid as inspiration for the romantic interest.”

Mary was nodding along a bit as I explained, and to my complete and utter relief, she seemed to take in all the details of my secret hobby just fine. She wasn’t offended that she didn’t know about it already, she just accepted the new information.

“So, not actually stealing his identity. You just wrote a character based on him?” Mary asked, earning a nod from me in answer, “I don’t see a problem. I’m pretty sure authors write other people they know into their stories all the time.”

“Yeah,” Jamie added, “I assume his character has a different name?”

“Right now it’s Zayne Abdul.”

“Wow,” Mary deadpanned, “You’re so creative.”

“That’s not even the bad part.” I winced.

“What’s the bad part?” Jamie asked.

“My followers, which isn’t a small amount,” at that, Mary pulled her phone out and started thumbing away, probably looking for my author accounts I previously blocked her from, “Um, may have figured out that Zayne is based on a real person.”

“How?” Mary asked without lifting her gaze from her phone.

“Zaid walked through my live-stream one time and my followers put two and two together.”

The two women stared at me, Jamie added a little thoughtful nod while Mary glanced back down at her phone and started scrolling, before her eyes widened in shock, “Oh, damn. You’re not kidding.” Based on how she lifted the phone closer to her face and her fingers dragged on the screen to expand an image, I guessed what she was looking at.

“Is that a drawing of him?” Jamie gasped in a whisper. She reached forward and pulled Mary’s phone out of her hands so that she could take a better look. As if she had done so before and it was a familiar gesture. To my surprise, Mary didn’t fight to keep her phone or look surprised by Jamie’s reach. She let Jamie grab it right out of her hands.

Odd.

Jamie was usually so passive.

“Yeah,” I scrunched my shoulders and leaned against a rack of clothing, tugging the collar of my t-shirt up over my nose in embarrassment, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I mean,” Mary’s lips quirked to the side as she and Jamie huddled over her phone to scroll through my feed, “It’s not…great. Do your followers know his real name or where he works?” I shook my head in the negative as I groaned into my shirt, the heat of embarrassment flooding my cheeks and neck.

“What do I do?”

“You can change your character’s name, for one,” Mary gave me a contemplative look, “But you said you already wrote the book?”

“Yeah, but my followers have been in love with this character from day one. It’s why I even have an agent and potential publisher in the first place. My followers fell in love with Zayne and blew this story up.”

“Well…shoot,” Jamie handed the phone back to Mary, “I’m guessing Zaid doesn’t know you did this?”

“No,” I shook my head as I released my face from the collar of my t-shirt, “I was hoping that I could just get away with it. I’m already so far deep into this that it would be suspicious for me to change details like the male lead’s name and how he looks, and I have a hard time believing that the CTO is someone who explores romance readers’ spaces on the internet,” I bit into my bottom lip as I made myself share this next portion of the situation, “The problem is that he and I are friends now.”

“And you weren’t before you did this?” Mary asked with the rise of a dark eyebrow.

“No, I mean, well,” I released a heavy sigh, “We were cordial. I said hi in passing and stuff, but he never went out of his way to befriend me. The past few weeks though, we’ve become friends. We tease each other. He let me wear his clothes. He got me a desk plant to apologize for the lack of accessible feminine hygiene products. I befriended his sister and am probably going to babysit his nephew soon. He’s read smut on my phone, and—”

“Hold up,” Mary held her hands up to stop my rambling the same time Jamie released a short, loud cackle that she quickly smothered with her hand, “He readwhaton your phone?”

“Oh my god, it was horrifying,” I placed another sweatshirt into the shopping cart we were sharing before we all started walking towards the dressing rooms, “I was going over edits the morning of the Halloween party. Well, I forgot I had that up on my phone, and so later when Zaid asked to use my phone to troubleshoot something for Nikhil, he saw the smutty scene that I had left open.” I still felt my stomach tumble into knots at the memory.

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